Web Hosting and Cloud Computing Predictions for 2016 and Beyond: Part 2

In part one of the 2016 predictions, I wrote about the integration between e-commerce and point-of-sale systems, the growth of website and app builders, and malicious attacks aimed at infecting clouds.

This post deals with some of the challenges the cloud and hosting industry is facing in 2016 and beyond.

Standardization and Telecom Support will Help IoT Take ShapeWhile not particularly important in the early days of IoT, standards will help further development; Telecoms need to facilitate IoT

The Internet of Things has been connecting more and more devices and the number of smart devices could be nearing 5 billion. Yet IoT’s spread is not accompanied by universal standards that govern how these technologies operate. Standards are being developed by the likes of 3GPP, IEEE, the Bluetooth SIG, and the Weightless SIG. Disagreement around standards is common among organizations, and many are promoting their own favorite standards.

Nest, for instance, has put its weight behind Thread, a relatively new standards group that covers networking, power conservation, security, and product compatibility. Thread specifies that devices must use IPv6 addresses, which provide the necessary address space as the number of internet-connected devices is set to explode.

While standard protocols have helped spread many web technologies, there’s evidence that device makers aren’t as concerned about IoT standards because different devices often don’t need to communicate directly, but rather connect on the web layer through RESTful and SOAP web services. The prevailing attitude seems to be that engineers should just build devices and not wait for standards.

There are also significant barriers IoT wireless connectivity. Telecoms will have to create new ways to deliver wireless connectivity to a host of IoT devices, however, they tend to react to changes slowly. In the next few years, we might be lucky if we see IoT-based bundles.

The flood of IoT data will also dramatically impact enterprise networks, and compel enterprises to use cloud-based solutions to meet performance requirements especially for applications like data anaytics where speed is paramount.

IT Spending Will Rise Around BI, Analytics, Security and AppsBusinesses are investigating new services and technologies around new capabilities, and overhauling their data storage practices

As in previous years, businesses are earmarking more money for IT. Recently, organizations are specifically increasing their spending on Business Intelligence and analytics (including predictive analytics), security, cloud apps, Software-as-a-Service, and mobile enterprise apps, according to a recent IDG Enterprise poll.

The areas being upgraded or refined, according to respondents, are data management (26 percent) and business continuity and disaster recovery (23 percent).

Developers will Update their Coding Practices for the CloudDevOps and Continuous Delivery will become more common; JavaScript will become a lingua franca for many web technologies

Organizations are realizing that IT can give them an edge on their rivals. And many are realizing they need more control and flexibility when it comes to deploying applications.

Half of enterprises with more than 1,000 employees are planning to use DevOps principals or have already begun, according to IDG. The practices they’re focusing on include Waterfall, Agile development and interactive/incremental development. Many are also addressing security upfront within the planning and building stages rather than tacking it on at the end.

Another trend for the coming years is that JavaScript is becoming a more versatile language. While it was once relegated to front-end development, Node.js provides back-end server functionality. Due to its popularity, web hosts will have to seriously consider supporting Node.js if they don’t already do so.

The Return of Managed Services as Companies Move more Complex Services to the Cloud

Many businesses have already made the move to public cloud services for things like email and file sharing.

This represents the low-hanging fruit of cloud hosting.

But when it comes to moving more complex and custom applications to the cloud, it can become significantly harder. That’s why managed services providers will continue to be relevant especially once businesses reach the limit of what their IT staff can do using Amazon Web Services and Azure.

Other Trends in Brief

Cloud will continue to battle over enterprise clients
AWS and Google have been trying to move up-market to enterprises, but it’s still difficult for them to woo customers away from the likes of IBM and Cisco, which bodes well for those companies and their clouds.

Industry consolidation
Market consolidation is so prevalent in the hosting industry that it hardly qualifies as a trend, and there’s always speculation on what cloud companies (like acquisition hold-out Rackspace) could be bought up.

More construction of international data centers
Demand for cloud services quickly growing internationally with Signapore being just one examples of a high-growth market. To take advantage of international markets, cloud businesses may have to deliver their services from a local data center to comply with data residency laws. This is compounded with the recent revoking of the Safe Harbor agreement between the US and Europe with no replacement in sight. There’s also an issue of trust after US government surveillance was revealed just a couple years ago. Many citizens don’t trust those in other countries with their data, meaning that data centers will be built where users live.

Do you agree/disagree with these predictions? What are your predictions for 2016? Let us know in the comments!

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3 Comments

FideleFriday, January 8 2016 at 6:20 pm

Hey David, just letting you know there is a guy out there who is copying blog content from other people and claiming it as his own. This post in specific can be found here:
http://geekcrunch.reviews/web-hosting-and-cloud-computing-predictions-for-2016-part-2/
This individual has been going around to sites like Reddit and claiming all works to be his own, and refuses to give attribution to the original authors. Thought I'd let you know!